The Zero Wars
by bennarde
Summary: Neo Arcadia is leaderless and furious. Zero is alone and the true X is tired. The Resistance is desperate and scared. This is war. All or nothing. Zero, the God of Destruction, must destroy Neo Arcadia's forces, or watch the Resistance burn.
1. Chapter 1: Let Me Rest

**Chapter One - Let Me Rest**

The scorched wind scooped handfuls of sand into its invisible fingers, carelessly tossing them over the reploid's unconscious body. Zero lay on the sweltering desert sand, a moment of rest having dragged him deep into a mechanical sleep.

A bright, radiant light shone over his unconscious face, Zero's unconscious form uneasily shifting in response to the powerful, but familiar presence.

Zero's lips moved in a slurred shift. "X..."

The cyber-elf took on his true form, the legendary blue-armored reploid's holographic ghost standing over Zero. X knelt, his translucent blue robes crumpling around his knees as the sand crunched beneath one of them, raw energy giving him an unstable, but corporeal existence. X reached out and touched a momentarily stable hand to Zero's back, his old - but unconscious - friend's red vest almost steaming with the heat of the sun and war.

"Zero," X smiled. "It's been so long, and I'm so tired."

Zero's fist clenched in the sand, clumps of the fine grains leaking out of his fist. X continued as he observed this.

"I've fought so hard, and for so long, I've watched in agony as reploid after reploid was wrongly terminated. I watched as the very people we fought and bled for turned their backs on the reploids who needed them most." An all-too real tear slowly trickled down X's momentarily solid cheek. "I'm tired, Zero, I'm so tired. Copy X, it felt horrible to watch him do such horrible things to fellow Reploids, to abandon the dream that we had all fought so hard to realize while bearing my name."

Zero's eyes flittered open as the heat of the battle with that pirate copy of X returned to him. The strange yet familiar sensation of Zero's saber cutting through the naive tyrant's armor, the blistering heat of a buster round grazing Zero's shoulder.

"Zero, I believe in you, but I'm tired." X rose to his feet, Zero's eyes climbing up a blue-armored boot to the blue helmet which hid dark hair.

"X, you," Zero groaned as he shakily lifted his head, still worn from the clash with Copy X.

X's form became static and translucent for a moment as worn green eyes welled with tears. X's smile more of an exhausted respite than a celebration.

"Yeah, it was so difficult without you, Zero, too difficult." X inclined his head to his left, shifting Zero's attention to the approaching Neo Arcadians. "The battle was so long and weary, I didn't feel like I could keep fighting any longer, I felt like I wouldn't be able to protect the Resistance."

Zero pushed himself up, sand falling off of his red vest and arm bracers as he forced his body off of its lazy respite. '_That's right,_' Zero's eyes narrowed with a sudden clarification. '_I destroyed Copy X in order to protect Ciel and the others._'

X smiled in intuitive understanding as the atmosphere solidified with Zero's determination. It was her bright blue eyes and joyous smile that had given Zero purpose, after all. '_Not too far behind her, that little reploid girl Alouette, with that long blonde hair the two of the might as well have been sisters._'

"Zero, I'm so tired," X turned to his old friend with one last request for him, for now at least. "Please, protect the reploids, realize our dream."

Zero, still on one knee, his saber's hilt in hand, watched as X's reploid form slowly disappeared, the bright blue orb of light that was X's cyber elf form taking its place. He momentarily shifted his attention to the pantheons that had completely surrounded him.

"Zero," X's cyber elf continued. "Watch over this world, and let me rest."

"Hmph." Zero confidently shut his eyes and rose to his feet. "I will, take as much time as you need."

Zero activated his saber, the long, triangular energy blade humming with an electric jade glow. The pantheons unanimously raised their integrated busters, some ten or so meters behind them the jet pantheons hovered patiently, busters aimed at Zero.

"I'll fight, rest, and leave it to me." Zero drew his buster from the holster on his back, priming the energy pistol for battle. "I don't care what it is, if an enemy appears, I'll cut it down, so leave it to me, X. If it gets in the way of our dream, I'll cut it down."

X's cyber-elf form gratefully glimmered as the red warrior relieved him of the battle. "Thank you, Zero, thank you so much."

Zero would've watched the cyber-elf fly away from this bleak situation, but the deafening roar of buster fire had prompted him to move. Zero bobbed and weaved like a hyper-charged boxer as he evaded the pantheons' lines of fire, the warrior's dance bringing his blade within lunging distance of his enemies.

Zero moved deeper into the swarm as two of the pantheons' cyclops-styled heads flew off of their falling bodies. Zero slashed and lunged and weaved and fired his buster - mostly point blank shots to mechanical red eyes - as he moved deeper into the swarm. Tens of pantheons fell as Zero fluidly danced through them, sand kicked up as they fired after him. The wind threw the oil that spurted from their bodies into their still-standing comrades' eyes, friendly fire decimating even more of them as they blasted through their own ranks.

"Agh!" A single blast of energy grazed Zero's already 'bleeding' shoulder.

Zero dashed and sliced through another trio of unfortunate pantheons as he evaded the buster fire of the extremely nimble jet pantheons that relentlessly pursued him from above. Zero lowered his head, curling his back and rolling through the sand to his feet as the over-sized fist of a close-quarters fist pantheon tore through a regular pantheon. A revolving jump and a well-placed horizontal strike was all it took to cut the down fist pantheon and a squad's worth of pantheons before Zero leaped behind a rather slow-witted pantheon.

A jet pantheon's busters tore through the unlucky pantheon as Zero put two crippling shots through the nimbly moving target before moving forward yet again, smirking as its wings shut down moments before a mid-air explosion.

"Agh!" Zero slid face-first through the sand.

Flipping over onto his back, Zero kicked the arm-integrated electrifying baton of a pantheon away, the lunging enemy stumbling as the baton which had momentarily crippled Zero's foot slashed at the air. Zero raised his buster, squeezed the trigger twice by way of double-tap, and kicked the lifeless pantheon off of him. Zero's eyes widened as a jet pantheon locked him in its sights.

Swiftly tucking his buster away, Zero pulled a small disc out of his bandelier and positioned it over his chest and face. The energy shield flashed as buster fire crashed and bounced against it, peppering a few pantheons with reflected buster fire.

"Hah!" Zero threw the shield and rolled out of the way, pulling out the extremely contracted triple rod as he deactivated and tucked away his saber.

Jumping in time to the rhythm of his roll, Zero activated the spear, the flash-light sized handle snapping to its full five feet of length with brilliant green energy at the end forming into a spearhead. Zero briefly observed his shield boomerang curving through the air and back to him as the still smolderingly hot halves of a jet pantheon fell out of the air. Bearing his teeth in a snarl, Zero brought the spear down in a ferocious and impressive seven-twenty spin through an unlucky and startled pair of pantheons.

Landing on the ball of his armored right boot, Zero spun with the momentum, deftly raising the spear over his head as he fluidly swung it round in a counter-clockwise motion with one hand, the jade energy spear slicing four more pantheons in half. Zero ducked as the shield boomerang whizzed over his head, leaning back limbo style and stabbing a fist pantheon as it wound back its right fist. As Zero pushed off of the fist pantheon, he noted the shield boomerang violently tearing through a pantheon's stomach as the pantheon before it fell, its legs sliced clean off from the knee down.

Zero's steely blue eyes shifted to the jet pantheon swooping down from above, buster raised and aimed for the lone reploid. Zero abruptly spun, spear in hand as he leaped onto the shoulders of the wounded fist pantheon, hopped onto its head and kicked off of its face, crushing its crimson eye.

"Hmph!" The solid thrust of his spear-like triple rod pierced the pantheon's metallic heart.

Zero ripped the triple rod upward through its head and circled it downward at the pantheon that pointed its clumsy buster straight up at him. The unmistakable raking sound of a reploid being split in half filled Zero's ears as the triple rod tore straight through the pantheon's entire metallic body. Sand flashed up as Zero's heavy but agile feet plowed into the desert sand, the harsh wind blew against his 'sweating' forehead. Zero swiped his left hand through the air, catching the shield boomerang as he poised himself for battle. Shield at his side, spear over his shoulder as his eyes darted about.

Two fist pantheons, two 'o clock. Regular pantheons from all sides, and multiple jet pantheons swirling through the air. Somewhere in the thick of the swarm of pantheons Zero saw the fist pantheon that got its eye crushed when Zero jumped off of it. The big-fisted clumsy oaf wildly swung its fists about in a blind but frenzied rampage, hitting pantheon after pantheon after pantheon and tearing off reploid arms and heads in the process.

Zero would've laughed, but the momentary stalemate demanded discipline. The wind harshly blew, throwing up some sand at all the reploids who stood ready for the battle, busters raised, massive fists clenched, wings steady, spear in hand and shield ready to be thrown. Zero's long blonde-hair waved in the wind, lapping over his shoulders and gently tickling at his cheeks. Another forceful gust of wind kicked up small clouds of dust. Zero seized the opportunity before him.

Zero lunged at the two fist pantheons as his shield boomerang tore through a squad of pantheons. Zero deftly moved, multiple rhythmic thrusts of the triple rod leaving gaping, oil-gushing wounds in both fist pantheons as he dashed into the crowd. Zero caught his shield boomerang and threw it again as he tore through the pantheons, spinning and ducking and weaving as he thrusted and swung his triple rod like the spear it was. Zero caught his shield boomerang again, quickly deactivated it and tucked it away as he continued to cut down pantheons with the triple rod.

Zero's eyes darted to his far left. The fluid but icy sensation of pain seized his left side as he drove the triple rod into the ground for support to stop himself from stumbling to the ground. The jet pantheon soared overhead as Zero clutched his 'bleeding' buster-wound.

"D-Dammit!" Zero swore through clenched teeth.

Pain, nothing new or foreign to Zero, it's what he'd done. His whole life, he suffered so that others wouldn't have to. That much he vaguely remembered as he clutched the wound, thick oil oozing out in a non-lethal flow.

"Rragh!" Zero pressed on.

The wound hampered his movements, so too often Zero found himself quick-drawing his buster on a jet pantheon or a squad of regular pantheons. Zero fought on, stabbing and slicing and shooting every pantheon that got in his way, parrying the heavy fists of the fist pantheons that assaulted him, and nimbly gunned down the jet pantheons that deftly soared through the air above him as they relentlessly fired away at the lone reploid.

Panting, Zero stopped for a moment. His wound was sending icy jolts of pain coursing through his body with each breath and movement. The wound was no joke, if left as it was, rusting might set in, but before that, it would continue to...

Zero raised the spear in an attempt to parry the fist pantheon's strike, but he stumbled forward as the triple rod was ripped right out of his hands. Zero watched his triple rod fly right into the chest of a pantheon as the fist pantheon's heavy right fist came flying right at him. Zero ducked and slipped to his left before ducking and weaving to the right, now standing in between the fist pantheon's massive arms. Zero drove his right hip into the fist pantheon's waist as he wrapped his right arm around its torso. Grabbing its right arm with his left hand Zero lifted the fist pantheon with his hip, pulling it against and over his hip he twisted his shoulders, hurling the pantheon into the desert sand.

Zero found his saber skewering the pantheon's head instinctively as he lunged at a squad of pantheons. Zero's blade ran through the first as he danced between their volleys of buster fire, his own buster exploding the head of a second and a third before sliced the right leg off of a forth, shooting it three times in the chest as he danced around its remains. Zero pressed on, dancing and weaving through and around his opponents as he even dragged around and threw pantheons at one another in the feverish pace of the battle. Long and hard the lone red reploid fought on, for Cerveau, the dark-haired reploid who'd poured such a great effort into developing Zero's weapons and entertaining the warrior with tales of hilariously failed experiments.

Zero brought his blade down on a fist pantheon, slicing clean through its armored wrist and cutting its body in half as he threw one of the halves at a squad of pantheons behind him. For Ciel, the only human being who risked her young life for the hopeless reploids X fought so desperately to protect, even as a cyber-elf. Alouette, that little reploid girl who aspired to be just as kind and caring as Ciel, and even invited the warrior to tea parties. For that old man Andrew who often indulged Zero with stories of his lively and peaceful past. For Andre, and Hibou, for all the members of the resistance. And more importantly.

"Hah!" Zero ran his blade through the chest of a pantheon, ripping it out through its left armpit as he bypassed the dying reploid.

For X, an old friend, Zero's greatest friend, and a true, weary hero. A hero who believed peace between human and reploid to be more than a dream. Zero spun clockwise on his left foot and brought his glowing saber through one of the final pantheons. Its arms and upper body falling off as its lifeless body collapsed. Drawing his buster Zero gunned down the last jet pantheon, the flying reploid exploding midair as it spiraled for the sandy earth. Zero lunged at the last pantheon, skewering the reploid and spinning clockwise as he fluidly removed the blade from its metallic chest cavity and sliced through its neck.

Zero panted as its head dropped off and rolled a couple feet while its body spasmed, fell to its knees, and lifelessly hit the ground. The pain in his side had grown somewhat more intense, crippling him with a limp that he'd somehow delayed during the course of the battle.

"Hah, hah! Hehe!" A weary smile spread across Zero's face as he limped through the ocean of reploid bodies. "Take as much time as you need, X, take as much time as you need."

Limping a little faster as he agonizingly brought his leg underneath him, Zero gripped the triple rod's shaft with his left hand, and yanked it out of the sand. He panted as he disabled the triple rod, the weapon retracting to its non-lethal flashlight sized self.

"You can rest now, X," Zero turned to the now setting sun, his softly glowing and humming saber in hand as he tucked the triple rod away. "I'll fight now, and I'll protect all of the reploids."

Zero looked down at his wound with a wince, and looked around at the hundreds of slain Neo Arcadian reploids as he thought of the supply depot literally lay before him, and behind him, and to his left, and somewhere to the northeast. Zero shook his head.

"Not all of them, but, you get my meaning." Zero disabled his saber and clipped it to his thigh. "Don't worry, I'll fight to see your dream become a reality. Peace, between humans and reploids. One day."

Zero searched one of the jet pantheons' remains, checking bandeliers for E-crystals and maintenance-packs. He found weapons-grade E-crystals that'd definitely power his weapons nicely, and ingestible E-crystals. The wounded warrior moved on to the bottom half of a normal pantheon, checking its bandelier and finding a thickly folded piece of yellow cloth. Zero flashed it open, to find a rather long cape that would definitely help him should there be a sandstorm. '_I'll fight for that peace, X._'

Zero clipped the cape on, already moving to another pantheon's somewhat intact remains. He blinked when he noted that he'd sliced its buster-arm off. '_But for now, I'll fight to get my wound fixed up before more Neo-Arcadians arrive._'

Zero's head locked up with pain, as if his mental gears had ground to an agonizing halt. He saw images of war, desolation and destruction as comrades died at the hands of enslaved Mavericks and as he and X cut and gunned down said Mavericks. He saw images of himself and people he apparently trusted resting around a strangely comforting fire as Zero treated his own wounds. He put a hand to his hurting forehead and grit his teeth.

"I'll fight for that peace, just like before, bro. I'll fight for that peace." Zero took another look at the sun.

Zero squinted his eyes as he sucked on a tooth. '_Three, about three hours until the sun sets. Before find somewhere safe to rest. This war is far from over._'


	2. Chapter 2: So Lonely

**Chapter Two - So Lonely**

Alouette squeezed the little white doll in her arms closer to her chest. '_I promise, Alouette, I'll be back._' She touched gently the top of her blonde head as she remembered Zero patting her head before he left. '_I'll go and beat the monster who is trying to hurt you all, and I'll be back._'

Her soft blue eyes sparkled with worry. It had already been a day since Zero had left, with the cold, somberly glowing moon having replaced the sun and he still hadn't come back. She wanted to see his smile again, his warm and soothing, yet strong and powerful smile. The little reploid girl turned, still clutching her doll, and started walking to the elevator.

"Oh, Alouette!" Alouette jumped, a little frightened by whoever had called her.

Alouette quickly snapped her head around and saw Colbor approaching, his green beret tilted a little too far to the left and his nappy brown hair fell a few inches short of his goggles. Alouette smiled at the much taller reploid as he ran, his machine-buster slung over his shoulder as he grinned at her. Zero had saved him too.

"Hi, Colbor!" She warmly beamed up at him as he stopped and stood about twice her size, maybe more. "Have you found Zero, yet?"

Colbor sucked in a weary breath, pursed his lips thoughtfully and shook his head. "Not yet, every time we get his signal, we check, and we find used maintenance kits and..."

Alouette's frightened eyes ballooned to almost comical proportions. "He's hurt? Zero's hurt! Did that meanie copy X do that? Or was it one of those other meanies that hurt Faucon and even tried to hurt Ciel and Cerveau?"

"Ah," Colbor didn't even know how to try to stop her.

Alouette squeezed her doll even more tightly as her worried eyes darted about. "But Zero promised! He promised that he'd be back! He promised!"

A single tear trailed down her soft cheek, a single tear filled with pain and anguish and anxiety, Zero was just as close to her as Ciel. Colbor softly gripped Alouette's tiny shoulders, the little reploid girl looked up to find the now kneeling Colbor smiling at her. It wasn't as soft as Zero's, nor was it anywhere near as strong, but it was an honest and sincere smile.

"Hey! It's the legendary Zero we're talking about here!" Colbor grinned at her. "Do you think he'd let any of those meanies retire him? Of course he'll be back! He's just..."

Alouette blinked, another tear trickling down her cheek as Colbor snapped his fingers. '_You're not making up some cheesy lie, are you?_' She wanted to ask.

"Yeah!" Colbor declared with a celebratory snap of his fingers. "Zero's just buying us time!"

Alouette blinked. "Huh?"

"Think about it! He beat their leader, and now they're all angry and want revenge, if he came back right away, they'd attack us again! But, he's fighting them off so that they won't be as strong if they do attack us!"

Alouette blinked again. She squeezed the doll once more. Zero had done something like that before, he singlehandedly took on and defeated about three hundred or so Neo Arcadians that were attacking from the desert, and then defeated that fire guy with the really big gun, Faffir was his name, or something like that. And right before he assaulted Neo Arcadia on his own, Zero fought off the Neo Arcadians who had assaulted and infiltrated the Resistance Base. Alouette smiled, still not sure if she was to worry about Zero, or be confident that he'd return.

"So we'll see him again? When he's done fighting?" Her eyes glinted with soft blue sparkles of hope.

Colbor nodded. "Yeah, but let's go visit Cerveau for a bit, I need to get my buster checked."

"Okay!" Alouette somewhat hopefully agreed.

The two of them walked the rest of the way to the elevator, fondly speaking of the legendary warrior who'd risked it all to defeat the Neo Arcadian tyrant copy X. The elevator was, contrary to its appearance, breathtakingly quick, and carried them to the engineering level - which had been reserved for weapons and equipment storage, and of course, as Cerveau's lab - in a just a few seconds.

The two passed a few reploids, nodding and waving to the hard-working reploids who were maintaining and repairing weapons and equipment, such as a particular stylish looking buster that had been based on Zero's buster, and a rather useful looking pair of sleek, visor-like binoculars. Alouette eyed the buster, and filed it away in her long-term memory as she entered Cerveau's lab with Colbor.

Cerveau's long green cloak had a brown-trim, and was darkened with soot and dirt in lots of different places as the engineer worked away at a really big buster. Alouette blinked at it, wondering if Zero ever would've used a buster that big. Alouette wondered if he was using one right now against the Neo Arcadians. She blinked and rolled her eyes up to the ceiling by way of flashback to the time when Cerveau was trying to make a really big buster that was as big as Zero's hair was long.

Zero had held it over his shoulder, carefully aimed it at the remains of the Mechaniloid that he'd destroyed when the Neo Arcadians sent it to attack the base and destroy the shield generator, and pulled the trigger.

"Ngah!" Zero probably grunted as the huuuuge laser pushed him a good ten feet across the ground.

Zero's analog sensors - ears - stopped working for a good seven minutes, and no matter how much Alouette yelled at Zero if he wanted to join her and Ciel and the little plush doll Ciel gave her for a tea-party, Zero could only blink and shout "I need to get Rocinolle to repair my analogs!". Alouette quickly deduced that Zero wouldn't use a buster that big unless it was to take down a ship, a really big, really strong airship. But then he'd probably steal a jet pantheon's wings and board it something rather than use one of those super-huge mega busters!

"Oh, Alouette?" Ciel's soft voice brought Alouette back to reality.

Alouette spun around to see Ciel also entering Cerveau's lab with a soft, radiant smile. Alouette's eyes beamed joyously as she gave a radiant smile back to Ciel.

"Sis!" Alouette threw her arms around the taller human girl.

Ciel giggled and lovingly embraced the little reploid girl as Alouette burrowed her face into her soft chest. "What are you doing here?"

"I came with Colbor because he was getting his buster checked!" Alouette let go of Ciel and turned to Cerveau and Colbor, who were both smiling at the two of them. "Colbor was just saying that Zero was buying time for us!"

Cerveau's eyes narrowed solemnly underneath his near opaque visor as he ran a dirtied hand through his shiny dark hair. "Well, I'd imagine that he's gonna buy a lot of time for us."

"Miss Ciel?" Colbor slung his now-repaired buster over his shoulder. "Has Zero tried to contact you? Or have you found him yet?"

Ciel wearily sighed, and to Alouette's nearly hope-shattering disappointment shook her head. Her shiny blonde ponytail flowing so beautifully out of the back of her bright pink helmet as tired blue eyes avoided the gazes of the others.

"None of the reconnaissance teams are finding Zero, they keep finding the remains of Neo Arcadian reploids, but other than that, no sign that Zero was there." Ciel sighed and placed a hand over her forehead, pushing her blonde bangs upward a little. "He isn't responding to our transmissions either."

"Hmm," Cerveau hummed.

Colbor scratched his chin. "What are we gonna do?"

"I don't know."

Alouette looked back and forth between them, hoping that one of them would break the silence with a hope bringing plan to bring back Zero and have him live with them all once again in peace. They were going to say that, right? Right?

"Zero will be back, right? I mean, he's too strong to ever be beaten by those meanies, right?" Alouette begged an answer, her smile too heavily laced with worry. "Right, Ciel?"

Ciel blinked, taken aback with what Alouette hoped wasn't fear. Alouette continued. "Right? I mean, he saved you, and Colbor, and all those reploids who'd been taken prisoner, right? And he captured and protected that factory, right? All for us, right?"

Ciel blinked, now taken aback by Alouette's remarkable insight. "He, did do all of that, didn't he?"

"Yeah! And what about you, Cerveau?" Alouette turned to the dark-haired engineer, her eyes becoming more solid with hope and faith. "Didn't you spend hours with Zero teaching him how to repair the weapons that you spent days making? And didn't you spend days and days setting up training courses for him to practice his skills in so that he could be a top-notch fighter? No," Alouette corrected herself. "A supreme legendary fighter?"

Cerveau rubbed his hair, his face flushed with embarrassment. "I did, didn't I? And there's no way he'd let all of that go to waste!"

"Oh, yeah! You're right on that one!" Colbor chimed with a gladdened shake of the head. "It's no joke when you say that he's the strongest guy around. Zero's strength is just way beyond belief."

Colbor looked to the corner, as if he could see the mighty red warrior's powerful image in the wall. Alouette kinda understood why he was looking off into the distance.

"I miss Zero," Alouette finally, timidly revealed, tightly squeezing the plush that Ciel had given her. "And I know he's gonna come back, because he promised. And Zero's never gonna let those weak bullies force him to break that promise, right Ciel?"

Ciel lovingly wrapped her arms around Alouette's little body from behind. "Of course he will, Alouette. Prince Zero-us of the Kingdom Resistance would never leave the beautiful princesses heartbroken."

"Ahaha!" Alouette slapped a hand over her mouth as she tried to muffle her giggling laughter.

Cerveau and Colbor raised confused eyebrows questioningly. Ciel and Alouette simply giggled, being the only ones to understand the joke.

* * *

Zero sat, leaning against the massive Neo Arcadian golem's remains. He'd constructed a make-shift tent out of multiple capes he'd found on pantheons, and using the golem's insides he'd started a fire. It was unnecessary, even at minus fifteen degrees Zero never had need for a fire, but something about this fire was just comforting. As if this was the kind of fire he'd once built with X and other comrades whose names had long escaped him.

Zero popped another E-Crystal into his mouth and chewed on it as he removed his buster's battery's drained E-Crystal and put in a large, fresh, faintly glowing weapons-grade E-Crystal. He reinserted the rather heavy battery into the weapon's chamber and reassembled the frame.

'_Zero-us! Zero-us! Save me Zero-us!_' Alouette's adorable little voice serenaded Zero's memory as he warmly remembered seeing her in her frilly little white dress, a beautiful and sparkling tiara atop her golden locks. '_It is I, Princess Alouetta! Save me from the evil Arcadian empire!_'

Zero fondly smiled. Although he never took off his usual combat gear, he had agreed to take off his helmet long enough to wear his crown on top of his shining golden mane of frizzy hair, frizzy because of his electrifying clash with Harpuia. '_Fear not, Princess Alouetta! Just as I saved Princess Cielis, so too shall you be saved! Hah!_' And that was when he'd run through X knows what with his fake saber, because using his real saber for a child's game was just asking for trouble.

'_Oh, our hero!_' Ciel had swooned, also attired in a similarly frilly dress and sparkly tiara. '_The mighty Zero-us has saved the Kingdom Resistance by striking the fearsome Gigantus Mechaniloidus Dragon! Hooray!_' Zero's fond smile grew into a nostalgic grin at the reference to his decimating the mechaniloid that had been sent to destroy the resistance base's shield generators. He tucked his buster away, now removing the exhausted battery from his saber. '_Now sweep me off of my feet, Zero-us! Sweep me off of my feet!_' Zero had lowered his plastic saber and faced the young princess Alouetta as she giggled at him.

'_You mean, like this!_' Zero-us had swiped at her legs and cradled her in his arm, Princess Alouetta's eyes ballooned as she was literally swept off of her feet. But, frightened as she was, she burst into a fit of radiant laughter and Zero too laughed, along with Ciel as well.

Zero found himself chuckling in fond memory of the girls. But sadly, that was all the time he could afford to dabble in fond memories. Zero reluctantly sombered himself as he continued to maintain his weapons. He'd have to keep fighting, long and hard before he could enjoy such amazing times with the girls, such peace.

"I can see why you're so fond of peace, X." Zero muttered, somehow knowing the now resting cyber-elf would hear him. "But do you think I really deserve such an amazing thing? Peace?"

Zero silently began working at his shield boomerang, adjusting its gyroscopic systems to be a bit more precise. He felt it in his core that X truly believed that Zero more than deserved peace.

"Think so, huh?" Zero removed the almost-empty battery from the shield boomerang. "But I'm just some weapon, a tool of war, it's all I've ever done, fight, and kill. Do I really deserve peace?"

Just then Zero saw Ciel, Alouette, and himself having a tea-party. Then it was him learning from Cerveau the basics of engineering and equipment maintenance. Right after that, Zero saw himself hard at work at Rocinolle's side tending to the wounded reploids, even though he himself was wounded. He felt as though X was saying something. As if, X was telling him, that Zero has always fought and killed, so that others would never have to.

A single, lonely tear trickled down Zero's cheek. "So that's your dream, huh? To fight and to kill, so that no one else ever has to."

Zero wiped his eyes with the back of a hand, and finished maintaining his shield boomerang. With that, he could rest for a few hours at least. That is, if the fire wasn't already betraying his position.

Zero tucked his weapons away and pulled the cape over his torso, careful not to dirty it with the oil from his wound, and shut his eyes. He wanted to go back to Ciel and the others, Alouette especially since he'd made a promise to her, but his job was to fight so they wouldn't have to. X had always been a hero for that reason, he never fought because he wanted to, he always fought, so that others wouldn't have to. It was for that reason, that X was a true warrior.

* * *

**A/N: I've always adored Alouette, so I really gave her a spotlight in this chapter as a source of hope. The promise is canon, she actually asks Zero to promise to return ASAP before he attacks copy X, and at the start of Z2 she chews him off for not coming back fast enough so I just HAD to include it. She kinda overshadows Ciel and the others, but, in the end I enjoyed writing Alouette's point of view (ALL HAIL ZERO-US!) Jokes aside, I seriously hope you guys enjoy seeing Alouette crank up the moe in this bloody - well, oily really - tale of war. :D**


	3. Chapter2&half: The Fourth Wall is Broken

**Chapter Two and a Half: The 4th Wall is Broken**

"Zero!" Alouette's soft blue eyes swelled to comical proportions as the legendary red reploid finally responded over the comm system. "Everyone! It's him! Zero's finally on the radio!

Every reploid in the Engineering Room froze solid, their jaws almost falling off of their skull frames as their eyes expanded to owl-like proportions. "Zero?" "It's him! It's Zero?" "OMG! What is he saying?" They all seemingly teleported from their equipment to Alouette, the frightened reploid girl shyly blinking as they assaulted and surrounded her with questions.

"Umm, I, uh, umm!" She shyly stuttered, unsure of how to deal with the swarming mob.

"Hey!" A deep, familiar voice barked, silencing the mob of frenzied reploids. "If you want to hear what Zero's saying, why don't you let the girl talk to him?"

Alouette's sparkling blue eyes gratefully softened at the sight of the tall, burly machine that was Faucon. His rough, long jaw was sharp enough to cut you, and his freshly shaved 'stubble' felt like sandpaper on remarkably smooth skin. His silver eyes glowed with the light of a reploid who'd seen enough combat alongside a fellow warrior to know that even if he was dead, it was just because he let the enemy killed him.

"Go ahead, baby girl," His heavy, gravelly voice boomed. "Talk to Zero!"

"Hah? Uh, mhm!" She nodded and shifted her attention to the sleek radio in her hand. "Z-Zero?

"Ah, it is you, Alouette! Has Ciel made any plans?"

"Um, no!" She softly chimed. "Why? Are you coming back to help us?"

"Ah, sorry, Alouette! I'm not gonna be back for a while."

"Why? Why Zero? Why aren't you coming back?" Tears welled up in her soft little eyes. "Is, is someone trying to kill us?"

"Neo Arcadia wants me dead, if I go back they'll hit you guys with everything they've got!"

"Oh," she pouted. "So are you fighting them off?"

Zero swung his saber down, slicing through another fist pantheon as he touched his left hand to his helmet's radio comms. Zero stood there, slicing pantheon after pantheon as they marched at him in a neat, cozy little line.

"Well, it's more like they're jumping off a cliff to be honest." Zero cut down another fist pantheon, climbing over their halved, smouldering metal corpses with one or two lazy steps. "Maybe it's because I broke the fourth wall."

"The fourth... wall?" Alouette turned to the others. "What's the fourth wall?"

"Don't you know?" Cerveau chimed as he made his way to the front of the crowd. "The fourth wall is the law of writing that states that a character of a story isn't supposed to know that they're a character. Breaking the fourth wall makes the story really awkward, and..."

"It apparently makes the author too lazy to write up a challenging fight!" Zero added as he cut down another dumb fist pantheon.

"So Zero, now that you've broken the fourth wall? What's gonna happen?" Alouette chimed.

"Well," Zero stepped over yet another smouldering corpse. "I guess that the author's laptop got taken away, so he's pressed for time when it comes down to weekly posting."

"And on top of that, he has to finish his online scholarship application before the thirtieth of April! **And** he has to take advantage of his fairly vast knowledge of self-taught martial arts in order to fight his siblings for a mere two hours on the family desktop!"

"Wait!" Alouette's eyes narrowed in confusion, wondering just how powerful a breaking of the fourth wall really is. "I thought that I was the only one who could hear Zero!"

"We've broken the fourth wall," Zero stepped over yet another corpse, not even bothering to look at his opponents. "Anything can happen now."

"Oh. Okay." Although Alouette wasn't quite sure what to believe at this point.

"Wait, if anything can happen because the fourth wall broke," Faucon pondered, tapping a finger to his masculine chin. "Would that mean that Neo Arcadia would replace their strongest reploids with pantheons with minor upgrades?"

"Or that every time Zero beats a reploid from Neo Arcadia we'll get fancy equipment and weapons like what the Neo Arcadians have at their capital?" Colbor hoped out loud.

Zero stepped over another dead fist pantheon. "Well, anything new?"

Everyone froze, looking about expectantly as Zero continued to slice away at pantheons. Faucon radioed the other combat reploids who were on sentry duty, figuring that they might've gotten some upgraded anti-aircraft weapons. He shook his head, disappointed that the fourth wall's brokenness wasn't helping them the way they hoped.

"The author must be really upset about having his laptop taken away," Cerveau surmised by way of deduction.

"He did bring it on himself, though," Zero responded as he surpassed another dead reploid. "His dad told him to study for his final exams and he starts watching boxing videos on his phone."

"But his dad never even knew he had exams until his uncle asked him when his exams were ending. It's his father's responsibility to know these things beforehand, he even has the password to his account for that Blackbaud thing and his dad never checks his grades."

"Wait, wait!" Alouette begged of Zero and Cerveau. "How do you know so much about the author and we don't?"

"Well, we were the first to break the fourth wall, so that might explain it." Zero surpassed another one of these severely dumbfounded reploids. "Man, the author's on a **serious** lazy-streak! All of these pantheons just keep marching right into my saber!"

"Yeah, probably doesn't help that the author's dad religiously implies that he's a crack-addicted gang-banger with no potential in anything in life but textbooks!" Cerveau added.

Faucon 'hmphed!' In disgust as he crossed burly arms over his chest. "Pathetic, if the man really believes that he should just come out and say it."

"Umm, everyone?" Alouette asked rather conservatively. "Is all of this happening because we broke the fourth wall? Or is it because the author made us break it?"

Everyone paused. Almost, Zero had to continue killing his non-intelligent opponents.

"That's a good question." Colbor remarked.

* * *

**A/N: So this mini-chapter was pretty much me finding a non-canon (to the actual story that is) means of griping to you what happens. I've pretty much explained the whole situation, which has proved to be a critical set back so my usual weekly updating on Saturday may be thrown completely off-track, and this little filler is just here in case I can't meet my self-imposed deadline. So yeah, just wish me luck or something, I wanna try my best to stay constant, but without my laptop it's just much harder than it needs to be.**


	4. Chapter 3: Clash of the Gods

**Chapter Three - Clash of the Gods**

Zero lay across the once-sweltering, but now cool - ish - desert sands. Binoculars to his eyes, Zero carefully observed the enemy camp. It's surprisingly fortunate what the Neo Arcadians will give to pantheons, especially those fancy-looking commando pantheons. Zero hadn't even seen the massive camp on the horizon when he checked with the binoculars, and yet he could zoom in well enough to see that it was more than a movement of pantheons. It seemed that some rather dangerous looking reploids designed specifically for handling Zero had been deployed to oversee the counter-offensive.

Zero had a fairly solid mental layout of the camp. Where the weapons were primarily stored, where the beefier, Zero-tailored reploids were, maintenance kits and stations, vehicles, communications equipment. Zero scratched out the word 'camp' and replaced it with 'frontline base'. Zero momentarily shut his eyes and listened.

Zero activated the 'heart-stopper' he'd retrieved from one of those commando pantheons with a flick of the cylindrical device's shape. A patrol chopper zoomed overhead, completely overlooking the red warrior as it recklessly threw sand about with the deafening roar of its propeller. The problem with Neo Arcadian enemy locators, is that they only work in a two-hundred meter radius when they're portable. Heart-stoppers render them useless by scrambling Zero's signal at a frequency undetectable to their equipment. Again, it's surprisingly fortunate what they'll entrust to pantheons, especially the fancy-looking commando pantheons. A stationary locator, however, could pick up Zero's signal from about three-hundred or so miles, and quite precisely too, it can triangulate locations to less than twenty meters. It gets a bit sketchy any further than that, so it'll be precise in triangulation to just over a mile. Which means they'd picked up Zero's signal from that base.

"Hmm," Zero silently contemplated his next move.

However you looked at it, Zero was going to have to fight a big, bloody battle. Zero shrugged and, after checking to make sure that the chopper was out of sight, rose to his feet. Saber's hilt in hand, Zero tucked away his binoculars and set off for the base. With such a massive distance to cover, he'd have to be extremely efficient about his movements. Within four days' time he'd reach that three-hundred mile radius, and from then on he'd have to devote all of his energy-crystals to that heart-stopper. Zero hurriedly limped on, his wound much better than before, and not hampering him anywhere near as badly as yesterday. It was exhausting, and an hour later, Zero found himself needing a much more efficient way of getting there.

Zero abruptly froze. He listened, carefully. _Du-du-du-du-du!_ The faint and distant beat of the chopper's propellers were signaling a return.

"Hmm, this might work." Zero said as he flicked off the heart-stopper.

Just for insurance, he drew and primed his buster and activated his saber, the triangular emerald blade humming threateningly as the chopper drew near. Zero raised the buster and squeezed and held the trigger, a round firing off and pinging on the chopper's armour, but the energy then pooling collectively into the shot, whistling and whirling as his handgun began to glow with a violently nuclear green tone. Zero kept his buster on the chopper, even as it drew nigh unto the lone warrior, both of its mounted busters blasting away at the sand around Zero.

Zero released the trigger. A massive jolt of recoil hurled itself down Zero's arm as the super-charged blast pierced the windshield, ripping the pilot's head clean off. Busters still blazing, the heavy yellow chopper began to plow through the air toward the earth. Zero narrowed his eyes in a squint. He watched as it sank nose-first into the scorching desert sand, tail-end jerking upward with such momentum that it flipped into a tumbling roll, sand flashing up as metal groaned and snapped in the chopper.

Zero's eyes ballooned when he realized that it was tumbling straight toward him. Shifting his weight to his right leg Zero leaned before propelling himself into the air with a hardy push, and then activated the thrusters in his boots, launching himself clear of the still tumbling chopper. Zero turned in mid-air as the chopper violently slammed into the ground where he was standing and just as violently rolled, flipped, and then nose-dived away from the spot where he would've died.

Zero landed on his right leg first, his booted heel grinding through the sand before he dropped to his left knee, catching himself with his left hand on the way down. He watched as the helicopter groaned to a devastated halt with that last nose-dive, apparently wedged too far into the sand to come down flat on the ground.

Zero got up, his saber in hand as he quickly limped over to the crashed chopper. Zero's eyes darted about the crash as he scanned the yellow chopper's remains for pantheons, quickly but warily approaching it. Something felt off, he stopped.

Zero leaped and boosted out of the way in time to evade a ridiculously long spear as it lunged at him from within the desert sands. Zero's saber was already activated before his feet hit the ground, brilliant emerald energy humming with a wary aggression. '_A mechaniloid?_' Zero jumped backward as another spear lunged at his throat from his far left. Zero deftly dropped into a backward roll as he landed, and watched as the two spears loosened into dark green bladed chains. '_Crap, an enemy who can submerge themself in the sand indefinitely!_'

Zero warily rose to his feet as his eyes darted about the sand, waves of heat licking up at the already stifling air in response to his frenzied search. Zero froze as he heard the distinct _cla-click!_ Of a buster being prepped for combat. Zero instinctively spun on the ball of his right foot, his buster already raised as he boosted out of the pantheon's line of fire. Zero's eyes shifted to his right before he could fire back.

Zero forcefully planted his feet into the ground, leaning back as he slid through the sand, a dark green spearhead just barely scraping his cheek as he slid to a halt. Zero boosted himself backward, his back plowing through the scorching sand a split second before he fluidly moved into a backward somersault. Now on his right knee, Zero slid across the sand as he opportunistically put four buster rounds through the pantheon's chest, violently slamming its body against the ruined hull of the chopper. Tucking his buster away Zero swept his eyes across the desert sand. He needed to find a way to unearth the mechaniloid, or this battle wouldn't end victoriously.

'_And here I am, just WAITING for someone to pop out of nowhere and declare that I'm the God of Destruction with a heaping side of self-righteous monologue!_' Zero warily sighed. This wasn't his day, not at all.

"O you ancient one," a soft female voice called to Zero from, wait. Where was it coming from? Zero was pretty sure a question mark was dangling over his head.

A feminine sand-enveloped figure rose from out of the sand. "Ancient, God of destruction."

'_Yeah, just like that._' Zero remarked to himself. Zero readied himself, watching as the sand swirled around the feminine figure in a nauseatingly swift vortex. The reploid standing in the center of the vortex wore a green-trimmed black armor, had hazel eyes and short, curly red hair that gently swayed with the vortex she was somehow making. Zero took note of the long, flowing blade-chains that were flowing out from her back.

"You Ancient God of Destruction, first you take the side of the Mavericks who would harm humanity," She softly touched a hand to her armored chest. "Then you steal the lives of the noble pantheons who would bravely stand against your evils? And now, you've robbed Neo Arcadia of its greatest hero, and only true leader?"

Zero restrained himself from rolling his eyes at her. She was, after all, making an already too melodramatic expression of pained regret.

"Does your cruelty know no bou..."

"Cut the crap!" Zero abruptly shut her down.

"Huh?" She had no idea what was going on, how could he so rudely cut her off in the middle of her speech? Just how cruel was this God of De...

"Harm humanity? Neo Arcadia's greatest hero? Don't make me laugh!" Zero decisively swung his blade through the air, seething fury taking dominance in his voice. "Humanity is nothing more than a bunch of squealing pigs and you are nothing more than farmhands tending to the insignificant fatlings they are! The humans who do make a difference, the humans who do stand apart from the rest and vow to no longer be pigs are culled by you and your ilk!"

Zero thrusted his saber at the still-shocked Neo Arcadian, somehow unable to quench this rage that he felt. "That pirate copy you so blindly served was nothing more than a low-life farmhand who gutted the humans who dared to show him the error of his ways!"

Her hazel eyes ballooned to almost comical proportions, and quickly narrowed with murderous rage. "H-How dare you insult the mighty X!"

"Ha! Mighty?" Zero softly chuckled. "That pirated copy couldn't retire a Maverick if it was blind!"

"How dare you!" She screamed, rage taking control of her body as it flew over the sand. "You evil God of Destruction! I, Terran Gaia, shall return you to the earth and purge you in my vengeful sands!"

Zero tucked his buster away and leaped back, evading the ridiculously long-ranged strike of one of her snake-like chains. '_So these chains are the spears she was attacking me with._' Zero surmised as he ducked and weaved out of the way of the serpent-like chains. '_She can strike from nearly ten feet away, this won't be easy! But,_' Zero found his footing, watching as a chain wound back in the fashion of an agitated cobra.

"Hah!" Zero's blade hummed murderously as it sliced through the lunging chain.

"Agh!" Terran Gaia stumbled backward, retracting her chain as if Zero'd cut off a limb.

Zero's eyes widened. '_Of course! Those aren't chains, they're limbs!_' Snarling through her grit teeth, Terran Gaia began to glow ominously, her entire body becoming surrounded in some electric silver aura as sand began to spiral around her in a swirling DNA-shaped vortex.

"Damn you, God of Destruction!" She growled as the sand roared around her.

She began to levitate, and began spinning in a slow-going synchronization with her sand vortex as she did. Zero drew his buster, and by way of trial and error, put a round into the vortex. The sand simply swallowed the blast. Zero put a few more rounds into it, before determining this. '_I can't touch her when she's using that vortex._'

He watched as Terran Gaia's levitating body spun in time with the raging, swirling vortex, and then shot straight up, surrounded by sand. The vortex simply grew longer as she went higher, and it eventually began to curve. Zero narrowed his eyes, watching as it curved more and more as though it was coming down straight at him.

"Hmph!" Zero leaped backward, barely avoiding Terran Gaia's lightning speed strike.

In that momentary flash of sweltering sand, Gaia's body had once again disappeared into the sand. The vortex simply fell apart. Zero moved uneasily as he scanned the ground, the feverish pace of the battle demanding him to maintain a ridiculously high sensitivity to even the most insignificant of vibrations. It wouldn't be long before she struck again, especially not when she was so furious. Zero's eyes darted to the ground behind him.

"Hah!" Zero leaped backward as Gaia burst out of the ground like an earthen drill.

'_She'd made a spear from the sand. Neo Arcadia must've made her to manipulate the desert!_' Zero realized as he observed the vortex's spear-like shape, with the sand around Gaia acting as the shaft, and the sand above her acting like a spearhead. Gaia, the greek goddess of the earth.

Zero's eyes widened. Swiftly turning himself counter-clockwise and activating his boot's thrusters, Zero boosted himself to the right of Gaia's vortex, dodging a deadly fast spear of sand. Zero twisted himself with the god-like speed his creator had built him with, whirling in a vortex of his own through the air, his humming saber hissing as it cut through spear after spear of sand.

Zero landed on the ball of his left foot, deftly spinning counter-clockwise as he drew his inactivated shield boomerang, clicked its battery to life, and hurled it after Gaia. Zero's buster hummed with the violently glowing energy of a charging green shot, almost nuclear glimmering plasma gathering in the buster as the shield sailed through the air at Gaia with frightening speed. Just as Zero had hoped, Gaia did nothing to stop his shield boomerang. In fact, she simply moved sideways a couple inches to the left so that the shield would pierce her vortex and still miss her.

"Silly God of Destruction!" The bloodthirsty green shield tore through her sand vortex, but curved, missing her by inches. "You aren't gonna get me like tha-Agh!"

Gaia's vortex fell apart as the merciless, cannon-ball sized burst of deadly jade plasma tore through her left shoulder. The violent yank of having her entire arm and even the upper left part of her chest cavity ripped off of her body threw her helplessly into the sweltering, heartless sands. Pain, hot, liquid and lava-like pain took over her sensors, blinding her eyes the white hot sensation of raw agony. '_Is this the power of the God of Destruction?_' She lay on the ground, her hazel eyes wide and twitching with nothing less than pure, primal fear. The soft, but terrifying _crunch! Crunch!_ of the God of Destruction closing in for the kill, his deadly green saber still humming with violent demand as gush after gush of oil escaped Gaia's devastated system. She felt it in her core when she saw his boots crush the sand before her eyes, she felt the fear that could be brought on by one thing. Death.

"If I'm the God of Destruction, then so be it." She finally heard his voice, and it terrified her.

Struggling, she lifted her shaking head up to face her destroyer. His deep green eyes were hardened with the merciless hatred of a true God of Destruction.

"The true leader of Neo Arcadia, the true X, never would've condoned a war between reploids."

Her eyes drifted back to the sand before her. Her breathing was becoming more and more haggard, the ever-consuming pain increasing as her respirators began to malfunction.

"I'm just a tool for war, built to destroy, I have no future." Zero's saber stopped humming as he knelt before the dying Gaia, his hardened green eyes narrowed in sympathy and remorse. "But the reploids the true X wanted me to protect, the Resistance, they have a future. So I'll fight, and I'll kill, and I'll bear the name 'God of Destruction'."

Gaia's eyes shut down momentarily, refusing to register any light at all. "Agh!" She cried, sobbing as more and more of her systems malfunctioned.

She didn't want to die. Not like this. Not alone. Her eyes reactivated, to find the God of Destruction no longer kneeling before her.

"Wh-what do you mean... The true X?... The Resistance is evil, right?..." She whimpered as she shakily searched her environment, finding that Zero had disappeared into the crashed chopper.

"No!" He shouted.

"Huh?" She gasped, unable to process the madness of the God of Destruction.

"There are many, many innocent reploids who are hiding within the Resistance! Reploids completely incapable of defending themselves from tyrants like that copy of X you so dearly loved."

"Hagh!" Gaia somehow jumped back and used her only remaining arm to desperately scramble away from the God of Destruction.

Zero watched as she lay on her back, her eyes clouded with fear as her chest rose and fell with an exaggerated rushing rhythm, her mouth snapping open and shut in time to the rush of her chest. The breathing signature to the dying, human or reploid, Zero had seen that breathing before. He was sure that he'd seen humans die in his arms before.

"The fate you're suffering, Gaia," Zero softly called to the dying reploid. "I don't want any of those reploids from the Resistance to suffer the same fate. Neither does the true X, and I promised the true X that I'd cut down any enemy who tried to hurt them."

Gaia's eyes completely malfunctioned, her core system now utterly incapable of supporting them. Somehow, despite missing a massive part of her left respirator, she broke down into a hysterical laugh. Her processor must've been running critically low on energy for her to be laughing like this. Or maybe, it was her deep, newly-found sense of respect for the ancient God of Destruction.

"Yo-ack! You're no God of uwahack! Of Destruction!" She coughed out, affording to laugh somehow. "Y-you're a... Ack! Hack! A monster!"

"So be it." Zero abruptly turned from her, his pale cape dangling floppily behind and below him.

"A monster... ack! Defending his cubs!" Gaia respectfully and demandingly finished.

Zero inclined his ear to her, looking over his shoulder at her. She chuckled, even though she couldn't see his face, he didn't need to ask her to continue.

"Don't worr... Ack! Worry!" She wheezed, sparing the last of her energy to encourage the God of Destruction. "No monster like you... Ack! Uwack! Hack! Will let your cubs get..." She gasped, begging her body to pitch forth its last energies. "Get hurt! God... of Destruction..." She wheezed, glad that this power that ended her life believed itself to be noble. "May an ancient being like you... Eternally wage war... for the sake... of your cubs...!"

A tired, sighing whisper escaped her oil-slickened lips, her core, processors and respirators finally malfunctioning to the point of no return. The oil that ran from her lips to her chin, like a thick, darkly coloured blood also stopped gushing from her massive, gaping wound where part of her chest and her entire left arm no longer were. Gaia, the goddess of the earth, was now dead.

Zero huffed out a tired breath and limped to the chopper. He truly was a God of Destruction. He limped into the heavily leaned chopper, ready to execute his original plan.

"X," Zero called out to his old friend. "I don't deserve peace, but the Resistance does."

Zero's core flittered with a foreign rage, something of astonishment and disbelief at his self-hatred. Zero pushed a number of buttons in the cockpit, ignoring his old friend's optimism.

"X, we both know that I only exist to wage war. I'll keep fighting, but I'll never be a hero like you."

Zero prepared himself for yet another massive battle, at least this time he might have the element of surprise. He felt it in his core, X was trying to convince him that he was just being too hard on himself, that Zero was one of the greatest heroes he'd ever known.

"Don't worry, I'll keep fighting," Zero shut his eyes.

Zero saw the image of a gently smiling, loving young Ciel. Her bright blue eyes sparkling with hope and joy. Her unwavering faith in Zero powerful enough to rival X's, and to unearth a feeling Zero had once known before. The girl's loving presence made him feel calm, but at the same time made him unusually excitable. He was sure he'd known this feeling before.

Zero opened his eyes. "I have a good reason to keep fighting."

* * *

An explosion rocked the base, the alarms blaring ecstatically in response. A tall, dark-haired and tan-skinned reploid's silver eyes snapped open as he was jolted out of his shutdown. Raising his knees to his chest as he planted his hands behind his shoulders, he kicked his legs outward, thrusting himself up and landing on the balls of his black and gold-trimmed boots as his body snapped up into a squatting position.

"Theseus!" A metallic voice sharply registered.

The silver-eyed reploid snapped his head over to the door, where a pantheon stood with his buster primed for battle.

"We're under attack! The God of Destruction is assaulting the base!"

"Where is he?" Theseus barked as he snatched up a pair of blade-less dagger hilts, gripping them in a reversed - or ice pick as he preferred - hold.

"He's in the Communications Wing! Your brothers Hercules and Perseus are engaging him alongside Commander Fefnir!" The pantheon gripped his buster, poised to sprint.

"Right! Let's be quick about this! Get the rest of your squad! We need to move, double time!"

"Yessir!" The pantheon nodded and quickly took off.

Theseus sprinted out of his room. He wasn't missing this fight. Not when he could avenge Master X.

* * *

"Twuah! Twuah! Twuah!" Fefnir barked as he fired a trio of massive, blazing energy bursts at the crimson warrior.

Fefnir's core was racing with excitement, his oil pulsing through his cardiovascular system as he narrowly dodged a counter barrage of Zero's semi-charged buster shots. Hercules dropped seemingly from nowhere as he came down at Zero, his violently glowing right fist sailing downward at Zero's head.

"Heh!" Fefnir smirked as Zero somehow weaved around the strike which shattered the base's metallic flooring, putting three swift buster rounds into Hercules' exposed and now crippled right side. "Don't underestimate him, dumbass!"

Fefnir dashed forward, the thrusters in his boots propelling him at his only threat. The greatest warrior he'd ever fought. Fefnir fired a barrage of massive, violent blasts after Zero as Perseus maneuvered around Zero's flank. Zero stopped mid-dash, sliding a few feet across the ground as his buster glowed as threateningly as the menacing glare in his eyes, and leaned over, boosting himself right into Fefnir's line of fire. Fefnir snarled with a hungry excitement as he blasted away at Zero.

Zero stopped again, leaned so far back that it looked like he was playing limbo, and then boosted himself backward. '_That won't help you dodge my attacks!_' Fefnir's eyes widened as Perseus' sapphire saber slashed at the air where Zero was, and Perseus' blue and red body landed where Zero was.

"Perseus!" Fefnir's warning came at the same time as the massive blasts.

The blasts mercilessly ploughed into Perseus' back, ripping him off of his feet and throwing him forward into a wounded and helpless tumble. Two Zero Hunters down only five minutes into the fight. Fefnir stood there, his Mexican standoff with Zero intensifying as tents burned and pantheon corpses laid scattered across the base.

"Damn, Zero! Just like old times, huh?" He shouted out to him as a ruined, burning radar tower groaned over and collapse.

"I don't have time for jokes, Fefnir!" Zero retorted. "Let's get this over with!"

"Heh! Just like old times!" Fefnir mumbled as he lunged forward, boosting himself at Zero.

Fefnir's free fist glowed a beaming white as he jumped forward, cocking it backward mid-air as Zero stood there, weapons disabled and watched Fefnir. Fefnir focused as much energy into his vigorously trembling and glowing fist as he could afford and drove his fist into the ground several feet short of Zero. Zero leaned to the right, twisting his hips and boosting his way out of the path of the violent blade of energy that rippled up through the ground like a miniature crescent moon that tore through metal and reploid remains as easily as Zero could put down a pantheon.

Fefnir was already standing right in front of Zero, massive buster on his arm, pivoting on his right foot as he lifted his left knee. Zero quickly stood on the ball of his left foot and ripped his knee up to meet his elbow as he held loosely clenched fists by his eyes, angling his right shin out to take and minimize the force of Fefnir's violent hip-twisting kicking.

"Not bad!" Fefnir acknowledged as he leaped backward, buster going _cla-click!_ As he primed it for lighter but quicker blasts.

Zero boosted backward, drawing his buster and twisting his hips as he boosted out of the Fefnir's line of fire, grenade-sized blasts of violently hissing red plasma crackling as they soared through the air where Zero was. Zero's trigger-finger was absurdly quick, seven quarter-sized blasts of plasma soaring at Fefnir at impossibly quick speeds. Fefnir hadn't even seen Zero move when the unfamiliar _ping-pang!_ Of enemy fire peppering his bulking salmon red chest plate started punching him back, his head jerking backward as one of the golden horns of his helmet took a hit.

A flash of fear washed over Fefnir, bringing a genuine but exaggerated smile to his battle-scarred face. God of Destruction or not, Zero was the only true threat he'd ever faced, and he loved it. The _cla-click!_ of his buster being primed for heavy, murderous blasts made Zero's snap open warily.

"You're in for it now, Zero! Haah!"

Zero stopped as Fefnir produced his second, equally large buster, primed it for extremely heavy blasts and began charging both. Zero watched as the two massive busters began glowing with a radioactive red glow, plasma swirling around Fefnir's hulking, violently trembling busters.

"Hah!" A massive, violent red beam of plasma burst out of Fefnir's right buster.

Zero boosted out of the way. Barely. The shockwave of the blast alone was enough to nearly slam Zero to the floor, and the heat of the absurd blast was melting the floor and even some of the dead pantheons! Zero's body could handle the heat as long as he maintained a two-foot gap from the absurdly powerful blast, and he'd have to work with that. Zero charged his buster as he continued to outmanoeuvre the still blazing beam.

Fefnir's right buster was steaming and flashed in a ferocious warning of overheat. He quickly stopped firing, lowered the air-distorting hot buster and snapped his cool, but still charging left buster up, locked onto Zero's still moving form. Zero stopped and boosted himself backward at the last second, his body momentarily malfunctioning from overheat before regaining solid function as it escaped the kill-range of the beam's all-consuming heat. Zero kept boosting backward, narrowly maintaining a three-foot gap between himself and the beam, desperately evading the beam as it obliterated more radio towers and pantheons. Fefnir kept firing that devastating beam, his weapon hissing softly as it began to steam, until eventually the heat of his overheating weapon threatened to fry his hand's circuitry. Fefnir stopped firing and snapped his right buster up.

"What!" Fefnir's eyes barely tracked the massive burst of violent green plasma as it burrowed through the air at his chest. "Ghaaagh!"

His body unable to absorb the impact, Fefnir found himself sailing through the air at an impossible speed, his still-melting chest-plate sizzling mid-air with the blisteringly hot reminder who the top reploid was. Fefnir found himself snickering mid-air, croaking into a maniacal laugh as he...

"Oof! Ughah!" Bouncing off of the Fefnir-shaped dent in the wall of the Zero Hunters' barracks Fefnir hit the ground like a sack of burnt-out E-Crystals.

Fefnir groaned as he pushed himself up into a crouching position, and forced himself to look up in time to see Zero disappear into the vehicles wing. Zero huffed out several short, chopped laughs before groaning into a somewhat broken, but still lively and energetic laugh.

"Damn," he muttered to himself as a chopper rose without consent, firing away dozens of missiles and blasting with its busters at the other vehicles that were still docked. "Just like old times, huh?"

* * *

"No!" Theseus shouted and hurled a grenade at the now-fleeing chopper.

The grenade detonated directly underneath the chopper, doing little if any damage to the fuselage. The God of Destruction's hardened green eyes looked down mockingly upon Theseus, showing no remorse, not even the slightest lick of guilt for his atrocities. The pantheons around the teary-eyed Theseus fired away at the escaping Zero, also doing little to no damage to his stolen escape vehicle. In Theseus' arms, was the lifeless body of Terran Gaia, which had been ruthlessly mangled by the horrendous demon that had just devastated the base. A tear dripped from Theseus' cheek, and fell on Gaia's closed right eyelid.

"Gaia!" He whispered to her lifeless, mutilated form. "I'm so sorry, Gaia!"

Theseus couldn't believe that she'd given her life to defend the pantheons here, he was furious that the murderous God of Destruction had brutally robbed her of her life, and most of all, he was furious that he hadn't been able to at least avenge her! Theseus lifted her lifeless body higher, and buried his failure of a face into her throat as he wept. The God of Destruction had robbed Neo Arcadia of their greatest hero X. He'd butchered so many innocent pantheons. He'd wounded Hercules and Perseus and even Commander Fefnir! And he'd brutally butchered Gaia and simply tossed her body onto the floor of the base. He couldn't be allowed to live. He had to be destroyed! He had to pay!

"Zero!" Theseus screamed, pantheons stopping and looking at him. "God of Destruction! I will destroy you! With my own two hands!"

* * *

**A/N: Losing my laptop has proven to be a critical setback indeed, so my posting most likely won't be regular. So, back on track, I'm actually trying to update every Saturday, and Theseus' little monologue at the end was meant to have a Lucas Gilbertson feel **** watch?v=pVhvlQT5G2E (click that link if you don't get it) so yeah! See you all next Saturday hopefully!**


	5. Chapter 4: Resting Place of the Gods

"Commander Fefnir's quite eccentric, isn't he?" Ares grumbled. "Ordering an offensive in the midst of this chaos? Unbelievable."

Theseus couldn't help but notice that Ares almost sounded glad. Nothing less from the God of War, eh? Theseus shook his head.

"We should be concentrating on that vermin God of Destruction."

"Don't worry," Ares growled reassuringly. "Our sister Ate will ensure that vengeance befalls the bastard!"

"Was it she who suggested an offensive against the Resistance?" Theseus' annoyance towards his sister intensified at the mere thought.

"Hehehe! What is a monster if he watches his cubs die?"

"An enraged monster." Theseus growled, narrowing his eyes at his brother, unable to process his brother's stupidi...

"Futureless." Ares' correction struck a nerve. "He is futureless without his cubs, he'll have no one to live out his legacy. His wounds will be deepened fatally by the loss."

"Hmph!" Theseus sharply turned away, not wanting to admit that Zero too could feel. "To kill the monster, we kill his cubs."

"While they're in the nest." Ares finished. "In war, you destroy your opponent from the inside first, and leave nothing but a crumbling shell on the outside.

Theseus saw it, the image of a broken Zero kneeling helplessly, oily and battle-torn, finally meeting his match. Finally getting what he deserved. Finally suffering as he'd caused so many others to suffer. Finally tasting the bitter venom of death and destruction.

"There is a method to their madness," Theseus finally admitted, a smirk cracking itself across his face. "Fine, if it means breaking the God of Destruction, I'll indulge in your insanity."

* * *

Zero rested within the chopper, which he'd powered down to prevent being located by Neo Arcadian scouts. Almost, it's camouflage systems were still active. He sighed as he leaned back into a chair. His wound hadn't really opened up too badly, but it'd began to ooze as lightly as a paper cut. That assault went surprisingly well! But still, something felt off.

Zero raised his binoculars to his eyes and peered out of the cockpit through them, observing the recovery efforts of his Neo Arcadian foes. A lot of pantheons were scurrying about, piling rubble and bodies onto hover carts as they tried to first and foremost clean the place up. Zero put the binoculars back down, still alert given his dangerous proximity to their fortress. He'd only flown approximately two miles BVR (beyond visual range) and had touched down here for ease of stalking the Neo Arcadian forces. If this thing's GPS system was correct, they were only four hundred miles from the current Resistance base.

"This is gonna be intense," Zero sighed as he popped an edible E-Crystal into his mouth.

He'd already sent a simple transmission to Ciel by using the chopper's radio systems to increase his communications range, something he'd never needed to do before he fought Copy X. Once he got back, he'd need to get his transmitters checked out. Zero munched on another E-Crystal, warily observing the number of pantheons no longer a part of the clean-up operation steadily increasing.

Knowing Fefnir, he was probably diverting as much resources into his counter-attack. Not the most overtly intelligent style of warfare, but definitely Fefnir's style. He was a furious gambler. All or nothing. Somehow this reminded Zero of himself. Maybe that's how Zero fought in his younger days, and he was pretty sure that X could provide some good stories about it too.

"Did I fight like Fefnir a century ago?" He called out to his old friend.

There was no answer. None other than a feeling of reluctant pity, the kind a human would hold to a friend who wanted to know what happened to them as a result of their intoxication.

"I'll take that as a yes." Zero resigned, not wanting to know just what it was that he'd done.

* * *

Ciel held her arms across her stomach as reploids worked hard and long in Cerveau's laboratory with the communication equipment. It'd been twenty minutes since Zero's transmission had arrived, and it wasn't the greatest piece of news the girl had gotten today. It was good news! But it wasn't great news.

"Anything more on Zero's location?" Ciel asked, her eyes sparkling hopefully.

Colbor checked with one of Cerveau's assistants, and then shook his head. "Nothing more."

"Hngh!" She fought the urge to bite down on her nails. "What about Faucon? Is his team ready?"

"Yes ma'am!" Colbor reported like a true soldier. "They're currently awaiting orders in the data room near your room Miss Ciel!"

"Good! good." Ciel nodded to herself.

"Don't worry, Ciel!" Came Alouette's soft, shy little voice as she wrapped tiny arms around Ciel's waist in a loving hug. "Zero's strong! He's very strong! Obviously he's just called to let us know he's been beating up Neo Arcadia, right?"

Ciel didn't know how, but Alouette was right on the money. Ciel found herself softly giggling at the little reploid girl, wide, cheerful eyes glimmering with faith in Prince Zero-us.

"You're right, Alouette!" Ciel lovingly returned the warm embrace of her little - and metaphorical - sister. "And I'm gonna send Faucon and some others to check up on him!"

Alouette's eyes exploded with hope at the mere thought of it. "Are we gonna bring him back? Are we Ciel? Are we?"

Alouette pulled away from Ciel with her back turned and a clenched fist. Ciel's brows knitted in confusion.

"Zero lied to me! He promised he'd come back right away and he didn't! That liar! I'm gonna beat him up when he gets back!" Alouette furiously kicked at the air, cheeks puffed with rage as she turned to Ciel. "Big sis! Get him back so that I can beat him up!"

Ciel stared at her little sis, eyes wide with surprise, but also with understanding. Ciel knelt and patted Alouette's soft little head.

"Don't blame Zero," she softly smiled. "We should've done more to help him get back! Especially me!"

Alouette just kept pouting. "But he's so strong! He should've been back by now even without our help!"

Ciel couldn't disagree with that, but more importantly, she couldn't disagree with the tears in Alouette's eyes. Alouette wasn't just hurt or angry, she was alone. The Resistance wasn't the same without Zero, Ciel wasn't the same. Ciel gently hugged Alouette, softly whispering to her.

"Yeah, I know, but Zero has to fight, for all of our sakes!"

"But I don't want him to fight!" Alouette's voice was cracking as tears streamed down her cheeks. "I want him to come home!"

Ciel didn't want to admit it, not in front of the others, but she too wanted Zero to just give up and come home. She wanted Neo Arcadia to just leave them alone and stop attacking them when all they wanted was peace. She wanted Zero to be by her side, she wanted to feel his strong, powerful presence again. She knew too well how Alouette felt.

"Yeah, I know, I know." Gently stroking Alouette's back, Ciel chose her words carefully. "He wants to come home too, but if he comes home now, Neo Arcadia will attack us and hurt us! And if we get hurt, it'll hurt Zero really, really bad!"

The sniffling Alouette remained relatively silent, doing her best to choke back her tears. She knew Zero was fighting for their sake, but, it was getting so lonely without him. She really and truly just wanted him to come back.

"All we can do, is work with Zero for as long as we can, and hope that Neo Arcadia gives up." Ciel gave Alouette a reassuring smile. "I'm putting together a team, and they're gonna go find Zero, and help him, okay?"

Alouette sniffled as she wiped away a tear, and reluctantly nodded. Ciel gently kissed her forehead.

"Okay, I'll see you in a bit, okay?"

"Okay," Alouette mumbled and squeezed her little white plush doll.

Ciel stood, motioned for Colbor to follow her and then headed to the elevator. Alouette sighed.

"Ciel?"

Ciel paused and snapped her attention to Alouette, her long hair cascading around her like a plethora of blonde whips. "Yeah?"

"I'm gonna beat Zero up anyway!" Alouette smiled. "A prince should never break his princess' heart!"

Ciel didn't know what to do, but she found herself smiling, and then giggling. Still, they were the only two to get the joke.

"Sure, just, go easy on him!"

Alouette's smile brightened as Ciel and Colbor mounted the elevator and waved back. Alouette shyly waved back, still hurt that Zero hadn't come back, but glad that he was successful. Watching Ciel and Colbor disappear into the upper levels of the Base, Alouette silently stalked away to find that buster she'd been looking at from before. She'd already stolen - yes, stolen, if there's one thing Zero passed onto Alouette, it's a readiness of acknowledging what she's doing wrong - those fancy binoculars, and she'd been learning from Faucon and the others how to maintain a buster and the binoculars. Not directly, she'd watch them while they were fixing their weapons and mentally record the steps to it. She'd learned that from Zero too when he taught her martial arts. She still enjoys bruising Zero's ribs with a good roundhouse kick.

* * *

"Attention! Officer on deck!" Faucon shouted as Ciel entered the near-empty data room.

Faucon's personal specialized reconnaissance and sabotage squad snapped to their feet, male and female reploids saluting Ciel, their ever benevolent saviour. Of course, they were all briefed on the current situation, per Ciel's orders.

"Everyone's been briefed on the situation, ma'am." Rouge reported as she typed on a datapad. "We're currently awaiting your orders."

"Okay," Ciel composed herself as she swept her bangs out of her eyes. "Zero's transmitters may have been damaged, we're only 400 miles from both his and the Neo Arcadian desert base's location, and Zero has successfully crippled their communications and tracking devices. It's a fairly good report."

Colbor signalled for the SRSS to relax, and they did. Ciel might not look like it, but she was as calculating as Zero. Well, not that calculating, maybe if Zero were a little more passive and girly, then that would be Ciel.

"But he's wounded, he's requested that we avoid retrieving him, but that is, quite frankly, tactically absurd." Ciel continued as she activated a holographic monitor, fixating it onto Zero's current location. "This stolen chopper is what Zero used to send that transmission, we'll transfer you here, a mile southwest of Zero's location where you'll then rendezvous with Zero himself! With me?"

"Mhm!" "Yes ma'am!" "I gotcha!"

"Good!" She returned to her planning lecture. "I'll need you all to sweep and clear a perimeter with a half mile radius so that we can send in a team of medical reploids to repair Zero's transmitters and wounds."

Ciel shut her eyes and inhaled deeply. The SRSS, a twelve-reploid team, was ready to hear whatever she had to say.

"I cannot stress how important this mission is, find Zero, secure his position, get him repaired. Whatever happens after that is his say, got it?"

"Ma'am yes ma'am!" They all bravely whisper-shouted at her.

"Good, report to the transserver immediately!" She ordered.

"Yes ma'am!"

And so it'd begun, an open war on a desert front. The Resistance was making their move, and Ciel was sure that this could very well make or break the war effort before it could even begin for them.

* * *

**A/N: Ate (read as Ah-tay) is the Greek goddess of vengeance and rebellion (or discord, whichever word is more accurate) and takes her place among the Zero Hunters for that very purpose (Copy X's death and all). Also, this chapter was really really REALLY rushed, so I hope it isn't too sloppy! But it's a resting chapter so I think it balances out.**


	6. Chapter 5: Special Operations

**Chapter Five - Special Operations**

* * *

**Just a quick note before you begin reading, any words that are in bold after this will be explained after this for the less military savvy.**

* * *

The alarms didn't blare as the twelve-reploid team stood on the pulsating and flashing trans-server, the Resistance didn't stop to wish their brothers and sisters good bye as they carried out their chores and routines. Colbor didn't announce the successful transfer, Ciel didn't utter a word to anyone as the few military personnel in the data room observed the team through the multiple monitors. Cerveau worked alongside Rouge to maintain strong communication links and to survey the area.

"Homeland this is Raider One," Faucon whispered through the comms. "Team is in position and ready to move, over."

"Solid copy, Raider One," Rouge replied as she tapped away at holographic interface. "You are clear to proceed with Operation Hellgates! Homeland out!"

"Solid copy," the wary and kneeling captain replied. "Raiders out."

Ciel held her arms folded semi-tensely, the air heavy with her military-grade look and presence. Everyone knew the importance of re-establishing communications with Zero, if they couldn't communicate it would be like wielding a buster with broken sights, conveniently inaccurate and almost useless. But among them all, only Cerveau knew how Ciel truly felt. Cerveau glanced at her, as she stood so seriously, ever-patiently watching the monitors as the SRSS swiftly slid down and climbed over the sand dunes. Cerveau resumed monitoring the team, holographic images of all twelve reploids mimicking their every movement as they quickly moved through the desert, deftly sliding down sand and just as swiftly climbing over them, a six-meter spread in between them all.

"Rouge, have the scanners detected traces of enemy movement?" Cerveau inquired.

"Positive, three patrol choppers are in the ten-mile airspace radius from Zero's last location." She replied, zooming in on one that was nearing Zero's location. "One is dangerously close to Zero's location."

"Understood, opening comms." Cerveau tapped away at a holo-interface, putting Rouge through.

"Raider One this is Homeland, be advised, three choppers are in the ten-mile radius and one of them is closing in on Zero's position! Over!"

"Solid copy!" Faucon sprinted over an upward sloping dune. "Picking up the pace and engaging our heart-stoppers! Everyone! Six meter spread! Over!"

"Good to hear, exercise caution Raider! Homeland out!"

* * *

Rivaille's ocean blue hair bounced and waved over his eyes as he sprinted across the momentarily flat sands, his long and heavy Type-2 Long-Range Counter-Sniper Buster tugging down on every fibre of his being, slowly and almost impossibly unnoticeably tugging at his endurance. Rivaille dropped to his behind and slightly raised his heels above the sand, holding his T-2 LRCS well above the flashing sand as he slid down the sand dune. Without skipping a beat, Rivaille's right heel drove into the sand and his body lurched forward, the heavy momentum of his body carrying him off the dune into a fast-rolling stepping as he smoothed out the momentum and burst back into a flat sprint.

His breathing controlled, but strong, his arms and legs bursting with a speed unnatural to a reploid of his design for such a ridiculously long period of time. '_Ah, that's right,_' his processor concluded. '_Zero's insane training is truly paying off. It always was._' Rivaille ascended an upward sloping dune within seconds, keeping up with even the elite Captain Faucon himself! Rivaille didn't quite get it, but his respiratory and cardiovascular systems had increased in efficiency almost entirely on their own with almost no external upgrades. Training, adjusting E-Crystal and skeletal frame enhancement fluid consumption, consuming liquefied metals to regenerate muscle fibres, it should've been impossible, but, it'd worked. Zero's training had brought the SRSS in particular as close to being human as they would ever be. Zero's training turned their mechanical, fixed limits and turned them into more human, obscure limits. In short, it'd made them adaptable.

The light panting of Rivaille's controlled breathing was accompanied by the smooth yet heavy stomps of reploid boots ploughing through the sand like ostriches across the desert sands. It was almost too quiet, sprinting and all, and once again Rivaille felt terrified. Once again he was behind enemy lines, his eyes darting about in search of hidden enemies and undetected threats as he and the commando squad bee-lined for Zero. Although it wasn't the same, Rivaille knew in his core that he was repaying Zero's favour from that time he'd rescued him and the others from Blizzack Stagroff. The sounds of battle that came through that door, the anxiety of watching for Neo-Arcadian Reploids to round that corner at the perfectly wrong time, he had to face these things again, but, so would Zero.

Rivaille kept sprinting, his eyes narrowing with both timidity and determination. His first combat run was gonna be his greatest, even if it was just repairing his helmet, he'd repay Zero's kindness and valour on the battlefield.

"Captain! Chopper Inbound!" Anastasia, the red-headed second in command, and the most ferocious female fighter in the Resistance, alerted the Captain and squad over the comms.

"Everyone hit the deck!" A soft _thud!_ and an equally soft grinding sound generated by the sand crunching underneath his now prone body followed the order.

Rivaille dropped himself with a "Hunh!" and slapped himself down into the sand, rifle up, finger away from the trigger. Once the flying sand fell in small showers back to the desert ground he lowered his LRCS, cradling it across his biceps.

Sand hissed and screamed under the growling roar of the chopper's propellers, the sounds fading after a few moments of the undetected reploid commandos being pelted and slapped with heaps of disturbed sand. Rivaille kept his finger away from the trigger, scared hopeless of accidentally pulling the trigger. Silence, eerie and nerve-wracking as he lay half-buried like a zombie lying in ambush for unwary prey.

"All right, regroup!" The Captain ordered as he emerged, sheets of sand flowing gracefully off of his body as he rose. "Everyone on me!"

The other eleven zombies - or maybe mummies would be more appropriate to the setting - all emerged from the sand, jogging over to the kneeling Faucon. Rivaille dropped on his behind and slid as he approached the captain and the others, driving his heels into the ground a few short of them and slowly grinding to a halt before snapping up onto one knee.

The reploid captain briefly glanced at each of his soldiers, his commandos, as he activated a small PDA. A holographic display of the area displayed, with the sea of desert dunes and sands green, the twelve of them green, and their objective, Zero's chopper, silver.

"All right," Faucon considerately and thoughtfully boomed. "We're less than a **click** away from Zero's position, right? Now, **Corporal Rivaille**, you and **Gunther** will recon Zero's chopper."

"Mhm!" Rivaille nodded as he watched the two holographic projections of the himself and Gunther moving toward the chopper.

Gunther nodded, his long brown hair bouncing a little. "Affirmative!"

"**Mike** and **Zoey** will trail behind you by twenty metres, and the rest of us will circle around the area, set up a six-point perimeter, and await further instructions from Homeland, solid copy?

"Solid copy!" They all hummed in response.

"Anastasia, time?"

"**D-Day, zero hours and fifteen minutes!**" She replied.

"Good progress, good progress! Move out!" He ordered.

"Hooyah!" They all whisper-shouted as they awkwardly snapped to their feet.

Rivaille fell into a fast jog, this was the final stretch. Everything would rest on this operation.

"Hey, Corporal!" Gunther spoke a little louder than Rivaille was comfortable with. "I heard you know Zero, that true?"

"Very true." Rivaille replied moments before dropping and sliding down a dune, bursting back into his half-sprint with Gunther behind him. "Zero started training me weeks after he joined the Resistance!"

"Wow," Gunther huffed as he followed Rivaille. "So that's why you're so good with busters?"

"Yeah, keep quiet! Save your energy!"

"Y-yeah!"

They kept running, sliding, and climbing until the chopper entered their field of view as a small speck. Rivaille quickly dropped himself down to one knee and held up a clenched fist, Gunther dropping and sliding into place next to him. Rivaille lowered his fist and raised his LRCS' **telescopic sight** to his right eye, shutting his left eye as he placed the butt end of his buster's **stock** on his shoulder. Through the scope he saw more clearly that the chopper had been landed somewhat neatly. Rivaille raised his right hand from the trigger to the scope, turning a dial to increase the magnification. The chopper's fuselage had been lightly peppered by buster-fire, but nothing serious. There was nothing more to see.

Rivaille crept to his feet as he waved Gunther and the others forward, already jogging again. His core was racing, oil flowing through his system so quickly that it was giving the impression that his core wasn't even pulsing. As he neared the chopper, he grew more anxious, the air growing heavy with tension. Failure or success determinable only by Zero's being alive and well and right there in that chopper! Rivaille slowed down, LRCS raised, the **muzzle** following the sharp, anxious movements of his eyes as he and Gunther slowly crept up to the chopper.

"Gunther, go around the other side, see if the other door is open." Rivaille made a semi-circular gesture with his right hand.

"Solid copy." Gunther sprinted around, disappearing behind the chopper, and then returning.

"Well? Is it open or...?" Rivaille jumped back from the door as it slammed open, raising and lowering and re-raising and finally lowering his rifle.

'_It's him! It's Zero! We've found him!_' Rivaille smiled and gave a thumbs-up to Gunther. Gunther's eyes nearly exploded out of their sockets as he rushed around to see him.

"Z-Zero, sir!" He stammered.

"Don't call me that." Zero shot him down as he stepped out of the chopper.

Rivaille activated his comms. "Captain! We've found Zero! He's here, over!"

"Solid copy, Rivaille, good work! Opening up comms with Homeland!"

"Solid copy, sir! Rivaille out!" Rivaille responded as he turned to Zero.

"So, I see you're repaying your old debts, huh?" Zero cracked a small smile at his former pupil.

"Yeah, I am!" Rivaille chuckled. "Are you hurt?"

Zero nodded and pointed to his now semi-repaired wound on his waist. "That and I think that my helmet's comms systems are damaged. In the meantime, brief me on the plan."

"Sure! Lemme get Mike and Zoey over here first!" Rivaille turned, rifle in arm as he waved them forward. "So, here's the idea!"

* * *

**A/N: Oh my gosh! It's been four weeks since I updated! What the heck am I doing? Seriously! But on a bright side, I finally got my laptop back! Problem is, I couldn't continue writing because my laptop doesn't have Wi-Fi, our desktop does. Which means I had to continue it (the chapter) on my desktop and that was just about impossible given my short attention span. Anyway! On to the translation!**

**1. Click=kilometre, it's a lot catchier and more convenient.**

**2. Mike, Zoey (or Zoe), Gunther, and Corporal Rivaille (also known as Captain Levi) are all characters from Attack on Titan! XD**

**3. D-Day equals the day an operation began. Zero hours and fifteen minutes simply means fifteen minutes since the op began.**

**4. Telescopic sight. The fancy military term for what we call the scope, it's something you attach to the rifle, not something that comes with the rifle. To go even more in-depth, there are three types of sights: iron sights, telescopic, and reflex. Iron sights are built onto the rifle, telescopic make use of powerful magnification lenses and are usually attachable, and reflex sights reflect light onto a set point on a lens, usually in the shape of crosshairs or something.**

**5. The stock end of a weapon is the back end, the end you can use to beat people to death with! This is made prominent in the original Call of Duty games and the Halo series. Subsequently the muzzle is the front and dangerous end, that part where the bullet or laser or whatever you're firing comes out. Never. Point. The Muzzle. At Anyone! At all! Unless you want them dead!**


End file.
